


From Whence We Came

by ZoeBartlet



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17150384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBartlet/pseuds/ZoeBartlet
Summary: Happy Holidays! Shameless shippiness to follow, plus lots of Rita b/c I love her. What were the many June/Nick scenes that we didn’t see? What did they say during their many meals together, prepared by Rita? What did Rita think of this love story? What did June and Nick do (ahem) and talk about during their many months at The Globe? There’s some melancholy and reflection in this fic but I ultimately lean into humor and romance b/c there’s enough depression on the show, thank you very much. I’ll attempt to tackle June, Nick, and Rita’s POV with each episode through S2E13.CHAPTER 2 IS NEW





	1. Pilot - Newports & Virgos

**Author's Note:**

> This is a “prequel” to my What We Wrought fic for which I’m currently experiencing serious writer’s block. My goal is to update this fic on Tuesdays and Fridays. Happy reading!

**June...**

From her window she takes in what she can, even the smallest changes. She’s mesmerized by the leaves, awaiting the days when the green will make way for the yellows and reds and browns... until they die and fall away. She tries to count them, branch by branch, performing the addition and subtraction in her head. It’s simple math but at least it fills the hours.

Watching him is better. When he’s not out driving the commander he smokes a cigarette four times a day, she’s figured out - after lunch, during his afternoon break, after dinner, and before bed - always at the same time. He is a creature of habit and discipline, that’s how she knows.

At night he usually has a mug or a glass beside him which she figures is liquor. Gilead was smart that way - they didn’t ban alcohol. Stripping the population of rights and freedoms, no problem, but take away a Bostonian’s drink? The fucking riots would have made the tea party look like, well, a tea party.

They’re menthol, the cigarettes, which amuses her. Some of her friends had smoked, particularly Moira’s crowd. She remembers being at parties and grabbing lit cigarettes from friends’ fingers for a drag before coughing and almost retching when she’d mistake a Newport for a Marlboro Light. They’re no longer branded, of course, but the Gileadian version is easy to spot by the color.

She ponders where he’s from. Roxbury occurred to her, he could pass for Latino, but she couldn’t detect an accent, the neighborhood’s or vestiges of Hispanic. He's working class, she was sure of that. Gilead may have elevated the religious fascists to commanders but most of the other men kept their original stations in Gilead, more or less.

Mechanic, maybe? Construction? Pool boy? She leans against the wall of her window seat and smiles remembering the porns she use to watch, once in a while, on her laptop. The ‘Pool Boy Fucks MILF’ trope had always amused her. They usually fucked from behind over a countertop in the kitchen. Sex in the pool would have made more sense but 2000s porn didn’t have the production value for underwater fucking. UPorn had killed the professional porn industry by then... schadenfreude.

The Waterfords don’t have a pool or a kid but she's pretty sure that Serena has engaged in some private Nick fucking fantasies, anyway. She quickly dismisses that thought, finding it oddly disturbing.

He reads at night, at the top of his stairs with his cigarette and drink, so that’s good, but she’s not sure it's his first choice. She rolls her eyes when it occurs to her that banning TV may be elevating male literacy. She recalls her fellow English Lit majors at B.C. - most of them women - bemoaning the decline of America’s reading proficiency. Irony. Ban literacy for half the population and make the other half read C. S. Lewis and Joseph Conrad, for fuck’s sake. Fist pump for Melville. She’d seen Moby Dick on a few bookshelves here, but she’s pretty sure that whoever is ruling Gilead’s culture wars doesn't understand its real meaning.

She wonders idly what he once watched. ESPN? Cops? Breaking Bad? Just, please, God, not Fox News...

The t-shirts are definitely her favorite. He’s required to wear a collared shirt during the day but at night it’s always a simple tight t-shirt in black or muddied colors like grey or khaki.

He rocks a James Dean look and she wonders if it’s on purpose. He’s lean and muscled and he handles the cigarettes with a kind of alpha nonchalance that turns her on. She doesn’t resist or even think about Luke when she watches him. Her entertainment has been reduced to counting leaves on branches so she figures Luke wouldn’t have begrudged her for hypnotically ogling the driver’s biceps.

If she’s honest, though, it’s his dark, soulful eyes that captivate her. She’s never quite sure what lies behind them.

She watches him… and he knows it. At first, he ignored her or tried. During the day as he cleaned and waxed the car, he'd glance up at her window quickly, too quickly. That’s how she knew he could feel her eyes on his back.

Their eye dance became more obvious at night. It was almost humorous. High school stuff. She’d sit at the window in the darkness, her light off so she wasn’t sure he was even aware she was there. He would smoke and read until he stood and went back inside.

It wasn’t until her second week at the Waterfords that it changed. The early August night air was thick and humid. He broke protocol by smoking two which she found curious. He finally stood and paused, flicking the cigarette to the ground, his head ducked and his gaze seemed to follow the path of the glimmering butt. Finally, when it was out, he slowly raised his eyes to the window and looked directly at her. He nodded, acknowledging her with a small smile, before turning away and closing his door behind him.

 

* * *

 

**Nick…**

He’s not sure why he decided to flirt with her, because it was a decision. That was clear. Everything in Gilead without has a purpose. The household’s ability to function was directly correlated to each member’s ability to suppress normal human instinct. After a while, for him, it had become habit, comfortable even.

 _So… why?_  he wonders. It probably has something to do with the Offred before her. She weighed on him. He had ignored her quiet unraveling into the next life... or nothingness. He'd done fuck all to prevent it, he's clear on that.

Maybe it was just that, the guilt, or maybe it was because it's the dog days of summer. He hadn’t seen Beth in weeks and was horny as hell. And, fuck it, he genuinely hated tuna. So, there’s that.

Anyway, people are complicated. He’d learned that lesson young when navigating his addicted family and had signed up for this SoJ shit. But he never thought he’d be untying dead women from nooses. That was just... fucked.

He’d have probably shut it down, the flirting, if he hadn’t seen her desperation after the ceremony, heaving with the need for fresh air and escape, trying to control the vomit in her throat. He and Rita had long since treated the ceremony as perfunctory which was the point, the brutal normal. June had shattered that for him in one fleeting gaze.

In the years that followed, he grew to understand that seeing her that way, that night, sealed his fate. She was a grotesque kind of beauty that night, long hair around her shoulders, her nightgown exposing bare arms and legs, almost like she might have looked before. She was a ghost of ethereal femininity until she looked up at him, direct and clear, the carnage from the commander reflected back at him with her enormous eyes.

The contained pity he’d usually felt for the other Offreds morphed into horror, then and there, and he couldn’t push it down. Not this time.

It was all he could do not to descend the steps and hold her while she wept.

****

She was strong, though. Stronger than the Offred before her. The next day when she suggested tuna to Rita and held his gaze from the doorway for those long seconds, he almost laughed at her challenge.

Game on.

As he walked down the hall munching on the peanut, a sense of relief washed over him. If she could flirt with him after the night before... she might just be able to handle this place.

Maybe.

 

* * *

 

**Rita...**

Dinners are quiet affairs, almost silent when the Waterfords are close. They usually eat around eight after Fred disappeared into his study, Serena to her knitting station beside the fireplace.

Nick always arrives promptly and newly showered. He takes a seat while she and Offred bring the food from the kitchen to the table. Rita is always secretly happy to feed him. He had become the replacement son for the one she’d lost though they never spoke of it.

She is always at her crankiest then, she knew that, having been on her feet for nearly fourteen hours.

She always sits at the head of the table and meets their quiet compliments on the food with scowls, grumbling at the lack of curry or buttermilk or scallions at the markets. She isn't immune to the amused looks that June and Nick’s exchange in response. It was human connection, at least, and she secretly looks forward to watching them each night.

It was Offred's third week in the household when Rita could feel herself giving into her persistent ice picking. Offred’s inner rebel was her secret superpower and Rita and Nick were gradually beginning to comprehend its ingredients, a subtle recipe spiced with charisma, humor, and smarts. It was hard to resist.

****

The Waterfords were out that particular evening, removing their dank threat from the atmosphere.

They didn't even bother to say grace. It’s like they can finally breathe.

As Rita spoons potatoes on her plate as Nick addresses her perfunctorily. “I reminded the Commander about Monday.”

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” she replies without looking at him, potatoes landing.

Nick shrugs slightly. “He said you should take the day off.”

After a moment’s silence and feeling left out, Offred asks quietly with her little-girl voice, “What’s Monday?” looking back and forth at them.

Neither Nick or Rita answers her which was typical, and Rita knew it would anger her. “Seriously, what’s on Monday?” Offred asks again, a little louder. Rita understood. The monotony of Gilead amplifies the desire for even the tiniest of changes to the routine.

Seconds tick by and Offred exhales in frustration. “No, no, no, _please_ , don’t speak all at once,” she says, mocking them, eyes darting from one to the other. Rita ignores her and passes her the gravy boat with a hard look. When their eyes meet Rita can see the stubbornness in hers, a determination to finally break the cold solidarity between her and Nick on this one night.

Offred carefully places the gravy boat down and crosses her arms. “Hmmm. Let me guess. Is Bieber is playing TD?”

Rita’s eyes smile even if her lips don't.

Offred reaches over and touches Rita’s arm as gasps in mock realization. “Rita, _my God_ , is a Whole Foods opening? Now _that’s_ worth a day of reverence!” Rita cocks her head and bites her lower lip.

Offred pauses, “No, I know! They’re screening _The Hunger Games_ at the Imax before we stone JLaw to death because, really, who doesn’t want to do that?” Her black humor earns her an unexpected chuckle from Rita and Offred's expression projects a mental touchdown.

“It’s her birthday,” Nick interjects, suppressing a smile himself as he cuts into a pork chop. Birthdays were not celebrated but a day off work for the staff was generally observed.

Rita watches as Offred, emboldened now, put her fork down and sits back in her chair with a wide smile. “Leo! That makes total sense!”

“Offred,” Nick said, lightly chiding but amused.

Offred rolls her eyes at him and Rita watches their quiet flirtation with satisfaction. Sure, it was astrological blasphemy but Offred finally felt safe with them, and she was glad for it. She, too, thought about the suicide mere months ago and wanted this Offred to feel more protected than the last one. As for Nick, considering his and Offred's constant eye-fucking, spy or not, Rita was confident that he’d never report her.

Offred, meanwhile, nods in confirmation. “Strong-headed, a leader, prideful. My mom was a Leo. Damn, you guys are f-,” she clears her throat, “-tough.”

Silence descends at the table again, neither Rita nor Nick willing to indulge her whimsy. Offred signs, exasperated, picking up her fork, stabbing a potato.

“When’s your birthday?” she asked Nick, but before he answers she put up her hand. “No, wait, let me guess. Capricorn, because you work like a dog, or… Virgo.”

“He’s a Virgo,” Rita says, surprising them as both pairs of eyes fly to her in surprise. _Whatever,_  Rita thinks. She used to read her daily horoscope every morning on the subway, before. It was fun.

“I knew it!” Offred exclaims, slapping the table lightly, her eyes teasing him. “Anal, judgy, and calculating.”

It was Nick’s turn to roll his eyes. “Thanks,” he says around a bite of green beans. “You know it’s all b.s., right?”

Offred shrugs. “Yeah, well, my college roommate was into it. Anyway, it’s all relative. Look around you,” she says, taking another jab at Gilead. Offred then points at him with her fork. “FYI, Virgos are also patient, nurturing, and loyal so you do have some good qualities.”

“Amen to that,” Rita says.

Amen, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… let’s see, what needs to be explained?
> 
> **For those who read this chapter when it was first posted, I've corrected Nick's reference of "June" b/c obv. he doesn't know her name yet. (How quickly we forget.) Thanks to those of you who reminded me!**
> 
> \- I’ve always been obsessed with the fact that June, Rita, and Nick probably ate together so I’ll try to pepper this fic with these scenes b/c they make me happy.  
> \- I actually like JLaw but she is a little too perfect and June’s humor does get super dark.  
> \- Roxbury does have a large-ish population of Latinos in Boston.  
> \- Newports are smoked disproportionately by lesbians, say the googles.  
> \- A quick deep dive into the reading lists of English classes at U.S. conservative religious colleges feature C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength which is very anti-science. Conrad's Heart of Darkness is largely about the evils of capitalism, imperialism, and slavery. Considering that the show seems to be embracing this odd “post-racial” reality for Gilead (for better or worse) and is largely an insular regime (e.g. not imperialist), I figure they’d keep the book around in order to shame the capitalist Western countries which are, in their minds, more racist.


	2. S1E2 - Nine o'clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, this is the episode when Janine-Ofwarren gives birth, Offred and the Commander play their first Scrabble game, and Emily-Ofglen is replaced.
> 
> I've chosen to believe Offred I was not groomed by Fred as June was based on interviews with Fiennes in which he says the Scrabble playing was making amends for the suicide... That, however, does leave the question of how Offred I knew about his Latin. I'll figure that out later.

**June…**

Dinnertime approaches and she sits at her window gnawing her cuticles. She'd stopped at sixteen but leave it to Gilead to revive the shittiest of habits. _Good thing I never took up cutting_ , she thinks cynically as her eyes wander to her table lamp pondering the sharp edges she could make with the light bulb. There’s still time. Nothing but time.

_Nine o’clock. Don’t be late._

Minutia matters here. The smallest things become amplified and she obsesses, wondering if any of it matters. What she wouldn't give for the thousands of distractions from before... Delaney tweets, bad Bravo TV, Candy Crush.

The leaves were turning, finally, and the days were darkening. Her brain pivots to sweeping questions about humanity and she draws her knees to her chest resting her head on them.

Would the horrors of Gilead one day be a lesson for humanity, never to be repeated, or was there no meaning to it at all? World War I never had a "I" until the second one came around. Iraq followed Vietnam. Do we ever learn?

Her brain scrambles back to herself. _Focus._  The Commander has more dignity than a forcing a bj on her, she thinks... hopes. There is even a bit of gentlemanly elegance about him, but maybe she's just seeing what she wants to see. She imagines insanity must feel something like this; when your instincts can no longer be trusted.

She tries to shove the dread down.

Nick had stared at her left knee today when she arrived soaked from the rain. That was... amusing? exciting? ridiculous? He’s probably just a horny leg guy which is a good thing, she figures because her calves are second to none. She makes a mental note to tease him someday soon, for kicks and giggles, by crossing her legs at the dinner table, hiking up her dress just enough.

Their games are juvenile, the stuff of young adult books but probably not even worthy of that genre, actually. A crush with a knee fixation wouldn’t have made the cut for Gossip Girl. It makes her happy, anyway. He reminds her that she is desirable, playful even, and _what’s the point of second-guessing that?,_ she asks herself rhetorically. In this fucking house of horrors, she's not gonna fight it.

He's hot. Maybe even honorable. She'll take it.

It's Nick’s warning about Ofglen that threw her. For Nick, mister broody himself, master of the monosyllable, it means something. She fears for Ofglen but mostly she fears for herself and her nine o'clock command performance in the Commander’s study.

Question after question races through her mind and she resolves to get answers at dinner.

****

When Rita rises to take the dirty dishes to the kitchen, he stands to depart. She reaches across the table placing her hand flat on the wood, “Don’t,” she whispers.

He pauses, glancing at her hand and then to Rita, ensuring that she was distracted. “What?” he asks sitting back down.

She withdraws her hand, making it into a small fist in front of her. “I need—,” she clears her throat, “—I need to know if he did this before with—,” she struggles to find the words, “— with the other Offred.”

Nick pushes his hand through his hair, a telltale indicator of his own anxiety.

“No. Never.”

She wants to vomit.

 

* * *

 

**Nick…**

The nauseousness he registers on Offred’s face is a shared condition. He knows the Commander better than anyone, more than even Serena at this point. Whatever the Commander has planned couldn’t be good.

The unspoken vow both he and Rita had made to ensure that this handmaid fared better than the last was probably for nothing and he could almost punch a wall in frustration.  He wants to reach for her hand. Instead, he just looks at her and clenches his jaw, swallowing his sympathy. She looks away.

****

At nine when the bell literally tolls, he comes outside to the top of the stairs. It was the only thing he could think of to do. It’s fucking impressive, he thinks, how Gilead imposes paralysis on everyone.

Their eyes lock for a moment before she lowers her window blind with purpose. His head falls in defeat. He understands, and she's right. There is fuck all he can do.

 

* * *

 

**Rita…**

The next night the baked chicken sits on Offred’s plate, uneaten. It annoys Rita. The thyme is fresh and it is one of her better dishes. She's most annoyed that neither of them has said a word, though. Serena is at the Putnams helping with the baby, the Commander is four rooms away. It isn’t like Offred to be this silent.

Her sharpest paring knife couldn’t cut the tension.

Nick had spent the past five minutes staring at the top of Offred's head. She, meanwhile, was seemingly fixated on her untouched Brussel sprouts.

Finally, Rita speaks to her. “You need to eat.”

Offred's face looks up. “I can’t, Rita, I’m sorry.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

Nick lets his fork drop with a small clang and he pushes his own plate away a few inches and sits back in his chair.

“Are one of you going to tell me what’s going on?” Rita finally asks, looking back and forth at them, concern overriding her usual perfunctory curtness.

She watches as Nick and Offred look at each other. It was a stand-off and she was baffled.

Nick is the one who finally gives in, predictably, swiping a hand over his mouth and dragging it to the back of his neck. “What’d he do?” he chokes out to Offred.

Rita’s confusion matches Offred’s. She notes how Offred’s brow comes together before comprehension finally settled on her features, apparently only now realizing the source of his tension, or even that he was silent until now.

Offred looks at Rita and then Nick with a question in her eyes about the topic being shared.

"She's gonna find out eventually," he says. Rita knows they're talking about her.

Rita's eyebrows raise. True, that.

June nods before finally sharing. “Scrabble. We played Scrabble,” Offred says, nodding to herself.

It takes a second for Nick to digest her news before his body visibly relaxes and he looked to the side, exhaling and muttering, “Jesus Christ,” under his breath.

Offred glances at Rita, a little embarrassed, and tries to explain. “The Commander. I had to meet with him last night.”

“And you played Scrabble?” Rita asked drolly. “Hot date.”

“Thankfully, it wasn’t,” Offred said in reply but she was looking at Nick. “But I let him win.”

“Then why aren’t you eating?” he asks, before Rita can. 

Offred pauses, nibbling on her thumbnail. Rita can see she's nervous, struggling to get the nerve to answer his entreaty. Eventually, she sits up, squaring her shoulders. “There’s a new Ofglen. Where did the other one go?” She regards him with stubborn hardness.

He knows. She knows he knows,

With that, Nick stands, pushing the chair back with a screech. Then he places his hands on the table bracketing his placemat and leans forward, looming over her. “Do not ask questions about her. To anyone. Understood?” he grinds out, pausing to pin her with his eyes, ensuring that his words sink in.

Offred says nothing but she crosses her arms over her chest, defiant. He straightens and shakes his head at her, disgusted, before turning to leave, slamming the door with force.

Both women, surprised at his tantrum, freeze for a few seconds.

Finally, Rita looks over at Offred. “Well, that was special.”

Offred laughs, despite herself. But she's secretly happy. She has a protector. Two, maybe. That's something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a June/Nick POV this episode could easily wash over you b/c there wasn’t much, but his pained look as she was about to meet Fred and the pulling down of her window blind in response was… interesting.
> 
> Also, I took the Simple Minds song as Reed and Miller’s acknowledgment of the teenagerness of it all, hence my Gossip Girl reference which I had to pare back from a longer paragraph of June pondering Dawson’s Creek and Buffy. I decided no one needed to read, that, - lol -but I will keep it happily in my personal vault...
> 
> PS For those who read Ch. 1 when it was first posted, I've corrected Nick's reference of "June" b/c obv. he doesn't know her name yet. (How quickly we forget.) Thanks to those of you who gave me a heads up!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated.


End file.
